My Grandpa Farm

I don't want to write this post. But I do want to honor a great man. My Grandpa Farm (aka "Grandpa VanRooy" or "Grandpa George") passed away yesterday with my grandmother by his side.

We had a special relationship; I'm going to miss him so much more than even I probably realize right now. But I am -- and will be -- comforted by the thought that he is very much with us still... and able to do all the things he hasn't been able to do in so long, like run and swim and have a martini with his friend Norm.

I last talked to my grandpa two days ago, when he and my grandma called for my birthday. We made plans for my trip out there next week. He mentioned that they wanted to take me out to dinner one night. I told him that we should order in instead, and eat on TV trays in the living room while watching Marlene Dietrich movies. (He had a six- or seven-decade crush on that woman!) He thought that sounded like a good idea. :)

I was telling Jay yesterday that despite how hard it is to lose my grandfather, I have no doubts that he knew how much I looked up to him, respected him and loved him. I never left him without a hug, a kiss and an "I love you." I never let a visit go by without touching him often -- whether it was just sitting and holding his hand or standing behind him and rubbing his neck. Though he might've lost confidence in himself as aging became more and more difficult, I never quit seeing the intelligent, strong, able man that he was for most of his life.

I feel lucky and proud to be George VanRooy's granddaughter.

Here's a column I wrote some time ago, for my grandfather's 90th birthday. Go well, grandfather.

* *

My grandfather is the oldest man in the world. Or, at least that’s what he’s been telling me for the last 20 years.

Every fall, when he and my grandmother would load up their sedan to make their annual trek south, he’d say, “See you in the spring, Jenny”— then add, dryly, “God willing.”
He was only half kidding — which drove me crazy. He was always certain he was too old to make it another year.

And so every year I’d tell him in exasperation that he’d be back. And every year he was. Still is. He celebrated his 90th birthday in April.

Except maybe “celebrated” is the wrong word. He thinks it’s ridiculous to reach 90. “That’s just too damn old,” he told me a few weeks ago. “Nobody should live this long.”

And I don’t blame him. The ailments that have accompanied his aging — emphysema, prostate cancer, a growing aneurysm — aren’t fun. Most of his friends have died. His failing memory angers him and his hearing loss is frustrating. A broken hip — the result of a fall when he reached down to retrieve a newspaper from his driveway a few years ago — has relegated him to regular use of a walker.

Life is not as fun as it used to be. And it used to be fun.

When he was young, he tells us, he’d swim across Minneapolis’ Lake Calhoun to buy a hot dog. He got into medical school after two years of undergraduate work. Learned Latin from his mother. Drank cocktails and smoked cigarettes and wore tuxedoes. Dated a gaggle of co-eds. Traveled India as an Army doctor. Fell in love with Marlene Dietrich. Spent time in Greenwich Village — attending parties he couldn’t tell me about until I was an adult. Met his future wife — my grandmother — as she was being wheeled into surgery for an appendectomy.

He’s the impetus of many of my stories, as well. How he’d eat the curl from the top of my ice cream cone during our trips to Dairy Queen. How he’d tip his La-Z-Boy over so I could lay claim to the change he’d lost underneath. How he built me a dollhouse decorated with tiny, framed pictures of my grandmother. How he’d say, “Stay well, granddaughter” when he’d leave me. And how I’d answer, “Go well, grandfather.” Our own little tradition.

Most memorably, he shared his love of words.

On road trips, he’d quiz my spelling prowess. (“Here’s a good one for you, Jenny! Spell ‘pestilence’.”) He’d recite nonsense poems to make me giggle. He’d quote authors and cite books —both famous and obscure — during conversation.

When I was in grade school, he gave me a narrow, leather-bound book of poetry. Next to the passages he deemed important, he penciled, “25 cents,” “50 cents” or, rarely, “$1” in his familiar, blocked script. When I could recite the passage from memory, he’d pay me.

I learned Donne’s No Man Is an Island. Coleridge’s Kubla Kahn. Whittier’s The Ballad of Barbara Fritchie. For an unprecedented $5, I even memorized the Greek alphabet. (A parlor trick he still calls on me to perform from time to time.)

I’m not sure it was an enviable skill at the time. In fact, it probably made me a bit of a weirdo. When I was nine years old, I attended a summer camp at which students had to sing a song or recite a poem to be excused for lunch. Other kids sang, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or delivered a variation of “Roses Are Red….” I recited Leigh Hunt’s Jenny Kissed Me.

In high school, my grandfather sent me a dictionary for Christmas — and told me I should get a stand to put it on. (“You can tell something about a person who has a dictionary stand,” he said.) When I was in college, he sent me a copy of Cry the Beloved Country because, he claimed, it contained the most beautiful first page of any novel, ever. (He added, incidentally, that if I didn’t agree, I shouldn’t be an English major. Humility was never his strong point.)

My grandfather still ends our visits with his customary, “God willing.” Only now, there’s more truth in those words than I let myself believe.

I want him to live forever — this man who can finish the New York Times crossword puzzle but who forgets my son’s name. I want to be able to say, “Stay well, Grandfather” and have it mean something. But mostly, I want to find some solace in the fact that the oldest man in the world has lived long enough to see his love of words continue in me.